Guest Blogger: Kimberly Goodson
Kimberly is a wife, sister, nanny, health coach, baker, home-maker, and Type 1 diabetic. She and her husband live in Durham, North Carolina, with their dog Bodie. While Matthew is in graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill, she cares for two adorable kids and a dog, runs her small Integrative Health Coaching business – Ginkgo and facilitates a local Type 1 Diabetic MeetUp group.
She loves the mountains, foodie life, and spending time with family and friends. She believes that life is so much better when shared with others, and she is so happy to share some of it with you here!
Read more entries by Kimberly at her blog
What do you want in life?
I find myself searching for peace, hope, and vitality. My heart and mind jump on board with a resounding “Yes! That sounds great! ” But my pancreas is a party pooper with a different answer.
How about you? Does your pancreas refuse to get in line with your life goals? Do you have plans that get mowed down by your Type 1 Diabetes?
I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to struggle. Diabetes doesn’t leave any part of life unaffected. It isn’t nice. It isn’t easy. And it certainly isn’t fair.
A few years ago, I had a kind of “diabetes midlife crisis” that reaffirmed the stubbornness of chronic disease and the impact that it has on a person over time – no matter how healthy that person may be.
Do you know what I’m talking about? I bet you do.
You want to scream at your Diabetes and “POOF!” have it disappear; but it’s not going anywhere, and you don’t know what to do. You know you are normal for feeling this way, and you don’t really have a lot of other baggage to work through with a counselor or anything. Yet you need help because you are just so fed up and tired of Diabetes, and you don’t know how to go on living this way. You spend so much time doing things you don’t really want to do, and realize you can’t continue alone. You really want to get beyond the rules of Diabetes and get on with living a vibrant life. I did, and so I asked for help.
We all need help from time to time, especially when living with Type 1. Being diagnosed and then struggling to find anyone that truly understood my experiences and frustrations is what inspired me to become a health coach for my fellow Type 1s.
Diabetes can blur our focus in life and make it hard to see where we are and where we want to go.
My mission is to help people like me get their goals back in focus, so that they can take that shot they have envisioned. I want to help empower them to live lives of vitality, peace and hope – regardless of what their pancreases might think.
As Type 1’s, we have a headstart on the most integral piece of finding our resolution. I’m talking about Mindful Awareness. Mindful Awareness is about listening to your body and being in tune with it – making time and space to listen past the noise to hear our song. A Type 1 person already has to pay attention to their body and its responses. If you’re like me, you check in with yourself multiple times a day to assess how you’re feeling and what that indicates about your blood sugars. With health coaching, we check in with ourselves to assess how we’re feeling and what that indicates about our goals and our progress. Type 1s are already taking that first baby step toward Mindful Awareness.
As a health coach, I believe that the client is his/her own expert. That’s not to say we don’t need doctors. We do! We need to be advised about the ideal blood sugars and blood pressure levels; but each and every one of us knows our day to day lives and bodies best. It’s up to us to figure out how to achieve our optimal health and life goals in our day to day lives, not just in the doctor’s office.
After all, isn’t that why we bother to go to the doctor in the first place? We want to give our bodies the best shot at life, and so we see our doctors to make sure we are doing the best we can to live longer and healthier. But we if we leave the office and succumb to a life overrun by worry, chaos and frustration, we are missing out entirely on what lies beyond our chronic illness.
Our lives need to have a forward progression. When that momentum slows down or stops, we feel imbalanced and depressed. When we realize our passions and live in ways that give those passions a chance to grow, we feel alive!
As a coach who has experienced the struggle firsthand, I help my clients discern where they are and where they want to go with their Diabetes – and beyond. That ‘beyond’ piece is what I’m so passionate about, and what I want you to pursue and discover! We aren’t here to simply survive with Diabetes. We are here for so much more.
What makes you tick? What fires you up? What makes your heart race? Well, THAT is the thing we’re chasing. And perhaps ‘beyond’ isn’t so out of reach after all
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